Around the world, voters are embracing democracy

Galvanized by youth movements in Serbia and Brazil, voters over the weekend came out in droves to register their choice for democracy over authoritarianism. The dual outpouring of democratic agency should make clear to a frightened American populace that the end of the free world is far from inevitable.

American voters must follow the lead of Serbians and Brazilians when they head to the polls for the midterm elections next week by making clear to those in power that the fate of the nation depends not on the whims of billionaire oligarchs or the faint courage of Democrats in Congress. It depends on the will of the American people.

It took barely two years for students in Serbia to successfully spearhead a powerful movement to bring down president Aleksandar Vucic’s twelve-year government, which was plagued by negligence and corruption. The swell began on Nov. 1, 2024, when a concrete roof jutting from the primary railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-largest city, collapsed, killing sixteen people. The tragedy triggered a national campaign against Vucic that started with weekly protests by students on university campuses but grew into rallies and door-to-door campaigns behind a slogan of “Serbia or Mafia?”

The leaderless student effort became a national movement capturing numerous segments of Serbian society — including farmers, teachers, actors and lawyers. It culminated in the country’s largest anti-government protest in March 2025 in Belgrade, and later, a demand for early parliamentary elections. Vucic finally announced snap elections in September, claiming the protestors were trying to “bring down” Serbia with the support of “the American deep state.” Turnout was historic, topping 67.6 percent as of Sunday evening local time, the highest since Yugoslavia’s breakup in 1992.

Brazil’s democracy dates back to 1985, following a 21-year military dictatorship. Like their counterparts in Serbia, Brazil’s youth drove a grassroots campaign – one that capitalized on coordinated messaging across digital media. As a result, the 80-year-old incumbent president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, defeated the right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro , son of former President Jair Bolsonaro. The elder Bolsonaro had refused to accept his own loss to Lula in 2022 and was later sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup to illegally stay in power.

Lula’s 52 percent victory amid 80 percent turnout was stunning, as it came after he had lost to Bolsonaro in the first-round election by over two million votes. The younger Bolsonaro has fled the country . The U.S. State Department issued him a visa after a Brazilian Supreme Court justice ordered that he surrender his passport as part of a money laundering investigation, and Trump called the election “rigged.”

These latest victories for liberal democracy come on the heels of Viktor Orban’s historic defeat six months ago in his bid to continue as leader of Hungary. Public opposition to Orban’s stints as prime minister, which ran from 1998 to 2002 and again from 2010 to 2026, began in earnest in 2024 after his government pardoned a former director of a children’s home who had been convicted of covering up sexual abuse.

As in Serbia and Brazil, Hungarian youth were at the forefront of ultimately toppling the far-right regime. In 2022, high school students helped stage a 35,000-person protest against Orban’s education policy before the Budapest Parliament, chanting “No teachers, no future.”

Americans are increasingly disillusioned with their own 250-year-old democracy, and for good reason. President Trump’s approval rating is near record lows just a week ahead of the midterms. A whopping 73 percent of recent poll respondents disapprove of his handling of fuel prices; 52 percent said they plan to vote for a Democratic candidate next month.

The popularity of American democracy itself isn’t faring much better. A Kettering-Gallup study from September revealed that only 19 percent of American adults believe that U.S. democracy is performing well; 56 percent said it is doing poorly. According to a poll released by Harvard in October, a staggering 91 percent of voters say the U.S. is on the wrong track. According to another Gallup poll , the “thriving” rate for Americans aged 18-20 fell 20 percentage points from 2020 to early 2026, to just 44 percent, with only 49 percent of young people expecting a high-quality life in five years.

With rising gas and cost-of-living prices, Trump’s meaningless war in Iran, abject corruption in the White House, artificial intelligence’s threat to the job market and Silicon Valley’s energy-guzzling data centers warming the planet at exponential rates, Americans may well be on the cusp of demanding radical change.

As the elections in Hungary, Serbia and Brazil seem to show, the way to make change is to vote — and to do so in exceptionally huge numbers, not at the typical 40 percent eligible-voter turnout rate for U.S. midterm elections. For Americans still inclined to stay home, the lesson is simple: Authoritarianism thrives when ordinary people conclude that their voices no longer matter.

If adult voters won’t do it for their own sake, perhaps they will think of the daunting odds stacked against our children and make a bet that their futures will still be bright.

Kimberly Wehle is currently a thematic group coordinator and fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences and author of “How to Read the Constitution — and Why,” as well as “What You Need to Know About Voting — and Why” and “How to Think Like a Lawyer — and Why. “